Good Mourning
by Kathey27
Summary: Ruby trying - and failing - to learn how to live in a world without her Castiel. / Or, There are fives stages of grief. Or so Ruby's heard. She's still fairly new to this whole…loving and losing someone deal. Post season 6.


**A/N: This little thing came to me after rewatching The Man Who Would Be King. Why was I rewatching that angst bucket you ask? Because I'm a masochist and needed to refresh my memory.**

**Disclaimer: Really? As if I could own those deep, blue, soulful angel eyes.**

**xxxxxx**

**good mourning:**

There are fives stages of grief.

Or so Ruby's heard. She's still fairly new to this whole…loving and losing someone deal. She loves the Winchesters, she loves Bobby, she'd loved the Harvelles and plenty of others who are now ashes and blood but she's never loved anyone like she loves that little blue-eyed angel.

When Castiel had entered her life she'd been confused and scared and lonely and trying to keep Sam sane and trying to help Dean recover and trying to gain Bobby's trust and she'd **_hated_** him at first.

She'd hated the innocent angel with a fiery passion the first time she'd looked at him.

She'd hated that he could talk to Dean and help him deal when she couldn't and she hated that he looked at Sam as if he was some disease that needed to be cured.

She'd hated him.

And then she'd loved him.

The transition had been pretty quick. He'd just saved Dean from getting pummeled by Alastair and then at the hospital she'd jumped into his shocked, stiff arms, muttering a quiet thanks and never really let go.

From then on, even when he was being a dick or Heaven's bitch or oblivious to any jokes at his expense, they were pretty much attached at the hips. She helped him look for God and defended him to her boys when they were being insensitive and he soothed her nightmares and took her away when she couldn't breathe. He loved her (in his own subtle, quiet way) and she'd loved him (in her own loud, explosive way).

Castiel is her…her everything.

Dean is her love, Sam her brother, Bobby her surrogate father and Castiel…everything.

xxxxxx

_Denial_

Ruby wears the trench coat everywhere for a full month after the lake.

Whenever Sam or Bobby try to bring it up she sighs and shakes her head.

"I need to keep it warm for when Cas comes back. He likes the shampoo I use so this way, it'll be the first thing he smells when he gets it back."

They just thin their lips and walk out of the room.

Dean doesn't bring it up and she's eighty seven percent sure it's due to the fact that if she hadn't taken the coat hostage, he probably would have. She isn't the only one that loves the angel.

She then starts to collect feathers. Lots of feathers.

When asked what that was all about she rolls her eyes and shrugs.

"I need them for when Cas comes back. He likes the yellow ones but I can never find those so I'm going to dye these," She holds up white ones. "For when he gets back. He says they make him feel better after a long day…he's a strange little thing, isn't he?"

They sigh and walk out.

Dean helps her dye them.

"He'll be back soon, you guys are so negative. Watch, give him a little bit, he wouldn't leave me."

Dean stays quiet and dips the feather into the bowl.

xxxxxx

_Anger_

Three months after the lake Ruby gets violent.

It starts out small. Bursts of curses and rants flying off of her lips at random. Then she starts to get sloppy on hunts, letting the monster get close enough to land a scratch or hit before she takes them down. The boys brush it off as nothing because well, it's Ruby; she's destructive and violent by nature.

But then she starts to wear long sleeves. Ruby doesn't do long sleeves. She'd once torn off all of the sleeves of Dean's shirts to make a point of how much she hated them and then proceeded to demand they get her all new things. Granted, she'd been under a curse at the time but the point had been made.

So when she starts to cover her arms, her boys notice.

Dean sees it first (who else is going to?) when he watches her pick out her clothes and when he asks what she's doing she shrugs and tells him to fuck off. He scowls, ignores her and grabs her arm because it's his bed she crawls into the nights she can't breathe.

He pulls up the sleeves to see mismatched scars and lines and burns and bruises. Everywhere.

Scratches and bite marks and fresh wounds and dried blood and…and he's never felt so sick in his entire life.

He ends up having to knock her out when she starts to thrash and snarl and fight back and threaten to break his spine if he tells Bobby or Sam.

He loves his girlfriend. He does. He'd marry her if she'd let him for crying out loud, that's how committed he is. So he really has no choice but to drag her back to Bobby's and create a whole new panic room just for her since every time they so much as let go of her she goes off on a rant about stupid ungrateful angels and claws at her shoulders and arms and neck, demanding that they let her go so she can go kill Castiel for leaving her.

Sam straps her down as Dean watches from outside with tears in his eyes because the angel might have been her reason for living (and it doesn't hurt to admit that anymore) but he'll also be the reason for her death.

xxxxxx

_Bargaining_

Two keys.

They make two sets of keys to Ruby's panic room. Neither are in Dean's possession. And he gets this, he does. If he had one of those keys, he would have ended up letting her go after the first freaking_ hour_.

After the thrashing and screaming and pleads and threats stop the quiet whimpers and begs begin.

"Please, Dean, please. I h-have to save him. No one else can save him. No one." She pleads, voice desperate and dry.

"Dean, _please_. I'll be good o-okay. I won't hurt myself just please," Choked sob. "I need to go because n-no one else knows that Castiel has to be talked to softly. You'll yell and Sam will say nothing and Bobby will grumble. He n-needs me. I can help."

"I need him. Can you bring him to me? Please, just for a little bit. I'll do anything. He needs me." She demands.

"This is kidnapping! Dean, _please damn it_. I j-just want to help him. He needs me. He doesn't even like Sam anymore, he tried to stab him in the back and you didn't understand but I do. I understand and I n-need to be there when he comes back!"

"_Dean_," She whispers. "I can't remember his eyes. I can't," she swallows. "I can't remember if they were sapphire or cerulean or pale or, or, _Dean_ I can't remember."

They let her out after three weeks once it's quiet and as he unchains her he finds her wrists rubbed raw and her hair dirty and bloody and her lips chapped and cracked and her arms pale and weak.

xxxxxx

_Depression_

Ruby doesn't get out of bed once she's free.

She keeps the trench coat close by and the dyed feathers at her nightstand and the blinds are all closed and she rubs her old scars on the bad nights and she eats when they ask her to but she doesn't get out of bed.

Sam thinks it's a phase. Bobby puts it off as being stubborn.

Dean knows it isn't going away any time soon.

He enters the bedroom quietly, squinting against the darkness to see her lying on the bed sideways, face tear streaked and tired. He crouches down before her, wiping the remains away from her face. He sighs and cups her cheeks lightly, pressing kisses to both.

"Ruby, baby, don't you think it's time you got up?"

"I need to be here for when he gets back."

He frowns, "Sweetie – "

"M-maybe he just got a little bit lost. He c-can still find his way back to us." She smiles softly, ignoring the question, eyes glazed over and unfocused.

"Ruby…it's been almost five months."

"You once left me for four." She whispers, almost accusingly, gaze hard and mean.

"Ruby," He sighs, caressing her hair. "Sweetheart…he's not coming back. The – the Leviathan got him. You were there. You saw it. There's no way he survived all of that."

She shakes her head and flinches away from his touch. "No. He wouldn't leave me. Y-you don't know him like I do. He – he's just Cas to you, angel slave. You call him down whenever you have a question or need someone to clean up your messes. I – I love him. I spend time with him. I helped him look for God and I taught him how to use his phone and to always put the peanut butter first and how to use a freezer because chocolate's always better frozen. I did. Not you."

Silence.

"Ruby, you're killing yourself. I won't let you do this." He insists, grip firm on her forearm.

She meets his gaze at this, eyes dead and blank and so **sad**. "He's not coming back…is he?" She breathes.

xxxxxx

_Acceptance_

Ruby exits the bedroom on the sixth month since the lake and it's painful.

Painful to look at, painful to think about, just _painful_.

It'd taken Ruby a long time to accept that Castiel had been falling. Then an even longer time to accept that it hadn't been her fault. Then longer to get over him leaving and going upstairs to be the Big Man and run Heaven.

But it didn't matter what he did because he _always_ came back to her and it didn't matter what she said because she _always_ waited for him to come back. That was what they did. They fought and yelled and he called her an evil abomination and she called him a stupid virgin and they'd storm out.

She'd go to Sam, scowling and snarling and he'd go to Dean, brooding and silent.

But they always went back to each other.

They would go and apologize and she'd clutch his arm tight and press a kiss to his neck and he'd smooth her hair down and kiss her forehead lightly. He'd say he hadn't meant it, that she was beautiful and so was her remaining soul. She'd say it wasn't his fault, that she'd eventually get him a nice girl (or guy, she doesn't judge) and let him go at it.

He never mentioned how she never apologized enough and she never mentioned how he apologized too much.

They are each other's other half, that missing piece, that sibling that you couldn't live without, each other's person.

While she'd been dead for those few moments, Castiel had tried to hold down the bleeding, ranting that he'd fix it and that it'd all be okay and he'd _broken_…until the angel remembered that he'd just been regenerated and had power once more and could bring her back.

While he'd been dead those two times, Ruby had begun to hyperventilate and scream and thrash, shouting for him to come back and that it wasn't fair and that she'd just found him and she'd _broken_…until the angel was coming back and touching her face and reassuring her that he was okay.

Without the other, they can't function.

All of this adds up to why it was oh so very painful watching Ruby try.

Her smiles are too dim, her laughs too light, her hair too limp, her walk too slow, her gestures too empty.

Sam sits down with her one afternoon, grabs her hands in his and sighs. "Ruby…are you… okay?"

Her eyes, dead and pale meet his no longer bright green ones and the only response she has is: "Are any of us?"

Bobby tries next, goes over and sighs awkwardly into the air. "Look, Blondie…if you need to…I know that the angel was…if – "

"Bobby," She interjects. "It's okay. I'm fine now. Really."

Dean tries. He lies down besides her at night and tightens his grip on her waist and sighs into her neck. She flinches. "I loved him too. Cas. He was yours but a little bit mine too and I know it hurts but – "

She rolls over, eyes hard and cold and that stops him midsentence. "Go on. Tell me. Tell me how it'll all be okay and I'll move on and find another Castiel. Tell me."

Silence.

"I know, okay?" She lets out a deep breath and continues. "I know and I'm trying and I get it. Castiel is gone and n-not coming back but that doesn't mean that you guys have to treat me like a damn psych patient. I'm better now."

"Ruby…we had to lock you away for a month. You are _not_ okay."

She pauses. "Well I'm getting there."

Two weeks from that night Dean wakes up to the smell of fire. He looks out his window to see a blonde standing by a large bonfire in the middle of the salvage yard. He slips out of the house as quietly as possible and rushes over, scowling at his barely clothed girlfriend. "Ruby what the – "

"I burnt it. T-the trench coat." Pause. "It was actually more of an over coat, he told me once. He told me that it b-bothered him for some reason whenever I c-called it a t-trench coat b-because it w-wasn't a-and I – I didn't get it until now but it's t-too late and h-he's gone now and isn't around to explain the d-difference anymore and Dean, it **hurts**."

He wipes away at her tears before wiping away his own.

"Everything hurts and I – I didn't know it was possible to feel this bad."

"...I know."

That night he holds her tight as she sobs her eyes out and cries herself to sleep, shivering and trembling in his arms.

xxxxxx

The next morning he wakes up to see Ruby smiling lightly at him, lips trembling and sweaty, hands clasping his face. "I can't _breathe_ without him." She whispers.

"I'll breathe for you." He offers, voice hoarse and quiet.

She nods at this, a single tear slipping down her cheek. "Okay. Okay."

xxxxxx

Two weeks later Sam and Dean and Bobby all wake up to the smell of bacon and they enter the kitchen to catch a glimpse of Ruby at the stove, trying to unsuccessfully keep the food from burning.

She turns and beams at them and waves at the dangerous looking food occupying the small table. "Eat." She demands and her smile is so happy and carefree none of them argue as they sit down and do just that.

He meets her gaze from across the table and watches as her eyes sparkle at one of Sam's lame jokes and her head gets thrown back in laughter at Bobby's comments and he starts to think that maybe, she'll eventually, one day, be okay.


End file.
